The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  CHAPTER XXXI

  PECK OF TROUBLES

  HE defenders of the old faith were fast fading. John Fisher was ill and weary in his prison cell; he was so wasted and worn that there were times when he looked as if he were already dead. But the king sent doctors, to restore him to the health he needed for his trial and execution. In the spring of this year, 1535, three Carthusian priors were cast into prison and interrogated by Thomas Cromwell. One of those questioned was John Haughton, prior of the London Charterhouse where More had once worshipped and prayed. It had been his spiritual foundation in every sense, and the eventual fate of the monks was intimately related to his own. They were asked if they would accept their king as supreme head of the Church of England; they refused to swear such an oath and one of them, Richard Reynolds of Syon, added that ‘he doth this as thousand thousand that be dead’.1 Two weeks later they were committed to trial on the charge of high treason, which they strenuously denied. Richard Reynolds, on being questioned by Audley, declared that ‘I am sure the larger part is secretly of our opinion, although outwardly, partly from fear and partly from hope, they profess to be of yours’.2 The three priors were then condemned to be taken to Tyburn.

  Two days after their trial in Westminster Hall, Edmund Walsingham came to More’s cell and told him that Cromwell wished to speak with him. More put on his gown and walked out upon the stone gallery that connected the chambers of the Tower; he entered a room where Cromwell sat with four others. He was also invited to sit down, but he refused to do so. He was asked if he had read the new statutes, recently promulgated by the parliament; More replied that he had seen ‘the boke’ but had returned it shortly afterward. He had not studied it, or put it ‘in remembraunce’.3 He was then asked if he had at least read that particular statute confirming Henry as ‘Supreme Hed’ of the Church. ‘Yes,’ was all he said. Then he was told that the king now did ‘demaund myne oppinion’4 on that matter. He replied in his familiar fashion—he had in the past declared his mind to Henry himself but, having reserved his life for prayer alone, he now refused ‘to medell’ in such matters.

  Cromwell then tried to kill More with kindness, professing the benevolent intentions of a king who would be willing to show mercy and allow his old servant to be ‘abrode in the worlde agayne among other men as I haue bene before’.5 But More no longer wished to exist in that world. ‘My hole study,’ he told the commissioners, ‘shal be vppon the passyon of Chryst.’ At this point he was sent out of the room and waited while they deliberated upon his perplexing and difficult case. For many prisoners the times of interrogation must have been marked by intense distress and anxiety, all the more discomfiting in these old chambers of stone, but it may be assumed that More tried to possess his soul in quiet.

  He was called back and was immediately asked if he should not be as subject to parliamentary statutes as any other man. He replied, characteristically, ‘I will not say the contrary.’6 Then Cromwell touched one of the primary reasons for More’s imprisonment, ‘that my demeanour in that matter was of a thyng that of likelyhode made now other men so styffe therin as they be’. More knew what ‘other men’ he meant. The three Carthusian priors had been interrogated and had also refused to swear to the supremacy, giving reasons similar to those which More himself had employed. They were about to be killed for their obstinacy, and Cromwell was implying that More might be held partly responsible for their cruel and lingering deaths. This proved too much for him and he expressed his indignation in some of the most forceful terms he had ever used in the Tower.

  Thomas More: I do nobody harme, I say none harme, I thynke none harme, but wysh euerye bodye good. And yf thys be not ynough to kepe a man alyue, in good fayth I long not to lyue. And I am dying alredy, and haue syns I came here, bene dyuers tymes in the case that I thought to dye within one houre, and I thank our Lorde I was neuer sory for yt, but rather sory whan I saw the pang past. And therfore my pore body ys at the Kyngis plesure, wolde God my deth myght do hym good.

  Cromwell was gentler with him then and, after some further subdued questioning on the statutes, he brought the interrogation to an end and said that ‘reporte shulde be made vnto the Kyngis Hyghnes, and hys gracyous plesure knowen’. The lieutenant of the Tower was called and More was escorted back to his cell.

  Within two or three days he wrote to his daughter with an account of this interview ‘fearing leaste she, being (as he thoughte) with childe, shulde take some harme’. The news of his interrogation would have been passed to the More household and he wished to reassure them that it had no fatal or conclusive outcome. At the same time Dame Alice More wrote to Cromwell, asking that she might be granted an audience with the king in order to plead for her husband; it was clear enough that More himself was doing nothing to alleviate his apparently unhappy situation and it had become her responsibility to find some remedy or ‘utterly in this world to be undone’.7 It is unlikely that Cromwell replied to her but, instead, Margaret Roper was allowed once more to visit her father. It was no coincidence at all, however, that she was permitted to enter his cell on the day that the three Carthusian priors were dragged from the Tower to Tyburn. The spectacle of their journey towards a terrible death would no doubt bring even more pathos to her pleas. Not much could have been seen, from the slitted windows of his chamber, but from William Roper’s later account it is clear that both father and daughter knew precisely what was happening outside the walls of the prison. ‘Lo dost thou not see, Meg,’ More said to her, ‘that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to the marriage?’8 He then lamented that he was forced to remain ‘in this vale of misery and iniquity’ while others went before him to eternal grace. His daughter could not have been expected to derive much worldly comfort from his remarks but, of all the household, she best understood his spiritual longings.

  He was closer to death than he may yet have suspected. At the end of May the king learned that the new pope, Paul III, had conferred a cardinal’s hat upon John Fisher. To turn an apparent traitor into one of the princes of the Church was provocative, perhaps, and it is reported that Henry was enraged by the decision. As Holinshed puts it in his history, ‘The hat came as far as Calais, but the head was off before the hat was on’.9 At the beginning of June a commission was established to enquire into treasons, with Cromwell and Audley among its members. More was summoned before it on 3 June, and Cromwell informed him that the king believed him to be the ‘occasion of muche grudge and harme in the realme’.10 He was asked to give a plain answer to the oath of supremacy, a copy of which Audley had in the pocket of his gown, but More responded in his most cautious and precise manner. ‘For if it so were that my conscience gaue me againste the statutes (wherein have my mynde giueth me I make no declaracion) that I nothinge doinge nor sayenge againste the statute it were a very harde thinge to compell me to saye either precisely with it againste my conscience to the losse of my soule, or precisely againste it to the destruction of my bodye.’11 He never wanted to be convicted of treason, because that would be to die for the wrong cause; he never wished to invite death too willingly, because that would be to die for the wrong reason. So More remained silent; his interrogators accused him of stubbornness, but for him it was the most carefully planned consistency. In the end Cromwell ‘saide that he liked me this daye muche worse than he did the laste time’,12 and sent him out of the room.

  When More had complained of the injustice of condemning either his body or soul he had, according to a later indictment, used the simile of a ‘double-edged sword’; it so happened that, in front of the same committee, John Fisher employed precisely the same image. Collusion or, at the very least, communication between the two prisoners had always been suspected; the lieutenant of the Tower, Edmund Walsingham, was indeed criticised for placing them in too close proximity. So the use of a two-edged sword now seemed to cut against them both. Their servants were interrogated a few days later, together with Walsingham’s own, in order to find evidence
of any clandestine dealings. It had become a very serious matter. The servants themselves were imprisoned and Fisher’s man, Richard Wilson, was threatened with hanging. Walsingham’s own employee, George Golde, confessed that he had been the messenger for certain communications between the prisoners; he had been told by Fisher that the letters had nothing to do with the king’s business, although they had nevertheless been burned. But these secret papers had, at least indirectly, everything to do with that business. Fisher had written to More on the import of the word ‘maliciously’ in the Treason Act; More had warned Fisher that they must give their own answers to the commissioners, so that they might not seem to collude. The rest was exhortation and prayer.

  These were in no sense treasonable letters, however, and, given More’s own extreme reluctance to say anything at all, the possibility of treacherous complicity was always remote. From the testimony of those involved, it seems clear that More continued to decline to speak even to his fellow prisoner on the real matters of his conscience. The servants had agreed ‘to deny any letters sent between them’13 and, in the circumstance of their masters’ plight, this must have seemed their only prudent course. But now that their subterfuge had come to light, they admitted that within the past few days Fisher had sent More half a custard. More himself had, a little before this, sent Fisher some apples and oranges as well as an image of St John. George Golde had also reported to Fisher that More ‘was merry’.

  Five days after Golde’s testimony More was visited by a less welcome guest. Now that the evidence of his communications with Fisher had been disclosed, he was placed in even stricter confinement. The Solicitor-General, Richard Rich, came to his cell with orders to take away all of More’s books and writing materials. As Sir Richard Southwell and two servants trussed up the books in one corner of the prison chamber, Rich engaged More in what might at first have appeared to be a bantering conversation. Both men were well known to each other, having lived in the same parish, and their families were closely associated. Southwell was also a family friend and may have been intending to deliver the confiscated books to Chelsea. But More and Rich were also prominent lawyers, and their legal relationship played a significant part in the conversation between them. The words used by them have been the subject of some debate. At his trial More strenuously denied speaking to Rich in the manner attributed to him, and his son-in-law’s later version of their conversation is somewhat ambiguous. There is one extant document, however, which at least has the merit of immediacy: Richard Rich returned to Cromwell and reported what More had said. An official record was prepared, which still survives in damaged and mutilated form.14 It begins ‘Charitably moved the seyd Thomas More to be conformable’; at once the reader might be standing in the prison cell with the two men.

  Richard Rich: Experience and lernyng & wysedome yt wer lyke as yf a man wold take … of water and cast yt in the Temmys.

  Having opened with a compliment to More’s superior abilities, the Solicitor-General then came down to the central matter.

  Richard Rich: Ask … you this case if it were inactyd by Parlyament that I should be King … and who so ever sayd nay …

  Thomas More: … putt a nother hyer case whiche was this Sir I put case … by Parlyment that God were not God …

  Richard Rich: … that act was not possyble to be made to make God ungod but sir by cause your case is … ye agre that ye were bound so to affirme & accept me to be Kyng …

  Thomas More: … the cases were not lyke by cause that a kyng … although the Kyng were acceptyd in Ingland yet moste Utter partes doo not affirme the same[.]

  Richard Rich then broke off the conversation and remarked on More’s ‘concelement to the questyon’ before wishing that ‘Jesu send you better grace’. Then he left the cell taking with him all of More’s books.

  In the eventual indictment against More the salient words about the king being ‘acceptyed’ only in England were deemed to refer to the royal supremacy of the Church in England. More was, therefore, treasonably denying the king’s title as Supreme Head. But in William Roper’s later version More is reported as having said ‘No more … could the Parliament make the King supreme head of the Church’. This might be interpreted as meaning the Church universal and it would be self-evident that the parliament could not confer the papacy on Henry. No treachery, therefore, had been uttered. There are many problems with all three accounts of what would turn out to be, for More, a momentous conversation—not the least of them being that Rich clearly believed More to be still practising ‘concelement to the questyon’. In Roper’s account of the trial, however, More is reported as also making another point. ‘And yet, if I had done so indeed, my Lords, as master Rich hath sworne, being it was spoken but in familiar secreate talk, nothing affirminge, and only in puttinge of cases without other displeasaunt circumstances, it cannot justly be taken to be spoken maliciouslye.’ This is a highly significant remark, the accuracy of which is confirmed by the surviving official memorandum. Throughout their conversation both More and Rich used the phrases ‘put case’ or ‘ask you this case’. This was the standard procedure of sixteenth-century lawyers. It was the method of their education; in Lincoln’s Inn a junior barrister could be given any subject of debate and asked to ‘put the case’ for it. The private feelings or convictions of the individual lawyer were in no way involved; it was a highly theoretical and dramatic activity, in other words, calling for the wisdom and subtlety of the orator. That is perhaps why Richard Rich had opened his conversation with a compliment on More’s own experience and learning; they were both lawyers, about to engage in an abstract debate on the force and extent of parliamentary statute. It would be inconceivable to More that anything he said should be taken to express his individual convictions. He had abided by the rules of law all of his life and still could not imagine a world in which they might be distorted or abrogated. In this, perhaps, he was naive.

  After his books and his writing materials had been taken away, he asked for the windows of his cell to be covered up. ‘Is it not meet,’ he is supposed to have said, ‘to shut up my shop windows when all my ware is gone?’15 He was, as George Golde told Fisher, in a ‘peck of troubles’. Two days after the confiscation of his books he was interrogated again, but he was no longer faced by a commission of his peers; he was questioned in the most formal manner by two official investigators, complete with two witnesses and a notary. More would have known that this was the preliminary for his trial. He was asked whether he would obey the king as Supreme Head of the Church in England. ‘I can make no answer.’ He was asked whether he would accept the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn as lawful. ‘I have never spoken against it, nor thereunto can make no answer.’ He was finally asked whether he believed himself formally obliged to answer the question concerning the king as Supreme Head. ‘I can make no answer.’

  He did not have to wait long to discover the outline of his fate. Three days later, John Fisher was put on trial for treason and condemned to death. He was no longer the Bishop of Rochester, having been stripped of his see by the king, and it was as ‘Master Fisher’ that he listened as Sir Thomas Audley ordered him to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

  Five days later, John Fisher was led from the Tower. The king had been told that the prisoner was now so frail and thin that he would not survive the journey on a hurdle to Tyburn, and accordingly his sentence had been changed to that of beheading on Tower Hill. He had been woken at five o’clock in the morning with this news, and, when he was told that he would be led to his execution at nine o’clock, he asked to be allowed to sleep a little longer. He awoke at seven and requested his servant to lay out a clean white shirt and a furred tippet. It was, he said, his wedding day. He was too weak to walk to the scaffold and instead was carried in a chair the short distance to the infamous hill. He carried his New Testament with him and opening it at random came upon a passage from the gospel of St John. ‘Now this is everlasting life,’ he read, ‘that they may know thee, the on
ly true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.’16 He climbed to the scaffold singing the Te Deum. When he took off his gown to prepare for death, the assembled crowd gasped at the sight of his gaunt and emaciated body. His head was off at the first blow and an extraordinary gush of blood issued from his neck: it seemed impossible that so much blood should come out of so skeletal a figure. His naked body was displayed at the site of execution, as the king had demanded; his head was then thrust upon a pike and placed in a small iron cage upon London Bridge. Here it grew ‘ruddy and comely’, and became such an object of wonder that Henry demanded that it be thrown into the river.